Did the nerds win?

[MGibster]

Certainly the degree to which the Storyteller system was really about telling stories about Anne Rice-style romantic monsters as opposed to Supernatural Superheroes was very dependent on the table, because a lot of the mechanics tended to push the latter more.

I can tell you with certainty that dual wielding .50 caliber Desert Eagles while wearing a black trench coat that somehow concealed a katana was vital to playing a romantic, tragic character in the Vampire campaigns chronicles I played acted in.

 

[Mannahnin]

I can tell you with certainty that dual wielding .50 caliber Desert Eagles while wearing a black trench coat that somehow concealed a katana was vital to playing a romantic, tragic character in the Vampire campaigns chronicles I played acted in.

I can't imagine how you guys got the idea to play that way!

 

[Ryujin]

I can tell you with certainty that dual wielding .50 caliber Desert Eagles while wearing a black trench coat that somehow concealed a katana was vital to playing a romantic, tragic character in the Vampire campaigns chronicles I played acted in.

My roly-poly, string tie wearing Good Ol' Boy political lobbyist of Clan Tremere approves.

 

[MGibster]

I can't imagine how you guys got the idea to play that way!

I poke fun at WoD, but I want to give White Wolf credit for what they were able to accomplish. The first Vampire book blew my 15 year old mind back in 1991. The premise of the game, the modern setting, the politics, and the creation myth for vampires centered around Cain were just fantastic. I could also reasonably expect to meet girls while playing Vampire back in the 1990s. Too bad I really didn't play a lot of Vampire back then.

 

[Mannahnin]

I poke fun at WoD, but I want to give White Wolf credit for what they were able to accomplish. The first Vampire book blew my 15 year old mind back in 1991. The premise of the game, the modern setting, the politics, and the creation myth for vampires centered around Cain were just fantastic. I could also reasonably expect to meet girls while playing Vampire back in the 1990s. Too bad I really didn't play a lot of Vampire back then.

Very similar story for me. I read Lestat and then Interview around the same time and the game hooked me hard.

Joined the Camarilla shortly before moving back to the East coast from Seattle in '93, and found out that it was possible to game with goth girls. And once I was near Boston, combine gaming with goth clubbing (which I couldn't do in Seattle, thanks to the Teen Dance Ordinance).

 

[Bohandas]

(which I couldn't do in Seattle, thanks to the Teen Dance Ordinance).

I've never heard of that before so I looked it up. That's messed up, that's like something out of the movie Footloose, or possibly Saudi Arabia.

Sadly, the kinds of busybodies that lobbied for its creation seem to be gathering power once more.

 

[Tonguez]

I've never heard of that before so I looked it up. That's messed up, that's like something out of the movie Footloose, or possibly Saudi Arabia.

Sadly, the kinds of busybodies that lobbied for its creation seem to be gathering power once more.

yeah while a small Oklahoma town having a teen dance ban was kinda beleivable in 1984, the fact that this one was in a city as big as Seattle and lasted into the 21st century is mindboggling.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I poke fun at WoD, but I want to give White Wolf credit for what they were able to accomplish. The first Vampire book blew my 15 year old mind back in 1991. The premise of the game, the modern setting, the politics, and the creation myth for vampires centered around Cain were just fantastic. I could also reasonably expect to meet girls while playing Vampire back in the 1990s. Too bad I really didn't play a lot of Vampire back then.

Same. Vampire the Masquerade was like a bolt of lightning. And I think it deserves mention that the way it approached role-playing and the advice it gave was revelatory and eye-opening.

 

[Ryujin]

Same. Vampire the Masquerade was like a bolt of lightning. And I think it deserves mention that the way it approached role-playing and the advice it gave was revelatory and eye-opening.

The way that you could mix & match the various attributes, in order to perform skill checks, seemed rather revolutionary at the time. My Tremere character could intimidate using innate charm, but my Gangrel team mate could use his physical attributes. A bit of a change from decades of RPGs in which you had to be the "Talker", in order to have interaction skills.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Certainly the degree to which the Storyteller system was really about telling stories about Anne Rice-style romantic monsters as opposed to Supernatural Superheroes was very dependent on the table, because a lot of the mechanics tended to push the latter more.

I feel like the crossover between those two genres was pretty damn high in the 1990s! Stuff like Forever Knight or even Highlander (the TV series) was pretty much in a juxtaposition between those, with a lot of romantic, emotional stuff that later irony-poisoned generations would have sneered at (I mean not that we didn't get irony-poisoned, but we weren't back then). The same player who willingly met the sunlight in a very emotional scene in one VtM Chronicle might be ripping hearts out with Daiklaive in a WtA one and so on. Hell, I once was in a VtM party with at least two characters who could be summed up as "young Lestat with a katana".

Only when Revised came in and tried to basically pour water on BOTH those subgenres in favour of "pure" body horror/existential horror did we really see people fighting about those subgenres existing. Let's be clear though - the people who wrote VtM Revised disliked "hot/romantic" vampires and "trenchcoats and katanas" vampires. Oddly enough as Revised developed, all evidence suggests they hated the hot vampires more, which seems crazy but there you are.